Updating Plugins

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perrysmotors

Is it possible that including the appcastURL entry in in the manifest.json file could cause Sketch 44.1 to crash on launch?

I added the entry to the latest release of my plugin https://github.com/perrysmotors/copy-framer-code as I assumed it would be ignored until Sketch 45 comes out.

I've had a user report Sketch crashing on launch: https://github.com/perrysmotors/copy-framer-code/issues/8

They say they've isolated the problem to my plugin and say "upon poking around it seems like its an issue with manifest.json".

I experienced a similar problem, which I resolved by removing all traces of Sketch and re-installing. It didn't occur to me that my plugin could be the source of the problem. I have the plugin installed again now without problems?

Kevin

Yes, unfortunately.

As a consequence we are renaming the "appcastURL" property to "appcast".

Hopefully we can get a new beta out to you soon. Apologies for the pain.

markh

I presume users will have to re-download all their plugins (or use a third-party updater) before the plugins will start auto-updating. I suppose the updateURL attribute in the manifest is probably not used consistently to do it automatically.

When linking directly to Github I found that URLs have to be in the following format:

https://github.com/<user>/<project>/blob/master/plugin.zip?raw=true

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<user>/<project>/master/appcast.xml

Zip files only work with the first one.

Kevin

I presume users will have to re-download all their plugins (or use a third-party updater) before the plugins will start auto-updating.

Yes, the users will have to have downloaded a version of the plugin with the new "appcast" entry in the manifest before the updating mechanism will.

This also brings up the point, that not all our users will update immediately. This will mean that you might want to leave your old updating mechanism in place for a while but only use it if the Sketch version is less than 45.

Kevin

When linking directly to Github I found that URLs have to be in the following format:

Sketch will expect the plugin itself to be in zipped container.

The appcast referred to must be an xml file and not zipped.

I hope that answers your question. I wasn't quite clear what you were wanting to know.

markh

Sketch will expect the plugin itself to be in zipped container.

I realise that, so a Github repos will look something like this:

plugin.sketchplugin - for the initial install
plugin.zip - a zip file of plugin.sketchplugin for the enclosure URL - http://github.com/<user>/<project>/blob/master/plugin.zip?raw=true
appcast.xml - http://github.com/<user>/<project>/blob/master/appcast.xml?raw=true

I wasn't quite clear what you were wanting to know.

I wasn't asking a question, just sharing some info about getting it to work with Github.

ale

Quick update everyone: in order to avoid the issues we've had in previous Sketch releases, where some plugin versions would crash or make Sketch unusable, we've taken the decision of disabling incompatible plugins in Sketch 45.

An "incompatible" plugin would be "anything that breaks Sketch in a way that makes our support team want to cry"

The way the system works is we'll have a plist file in the app bundle, where we'll store information about which combinations of plugin identifier + version cause issues in Sketch.

At launch, we'll disable the known offenders and warn the user about the fact, offering a way to update those plugins that have a new version available. Keep in mind that the version part is important: if plugin com.sketchapp.custom-panel is known to break Sketch in version 1.1, but the issue is fixed in version 1.2, we'll only warn users that have version 1.1 installed, not those who already have version 1.2.

We hope this will make life easier for everyone, since we'll all get less support requests and our users will be happier when their plugins keep working after a Sketch update.

Thank you for your attention!

mathieudutour

How do you know if a plugin is incompatible before installing it and running it? And how do you know if a newer version fixes "it"?

ale

mathieudutour flagging a plugin as incompatible is a job for our QA team. And if a newer version doesn't fix the issue, they'll keep flagging it until it does

mathieudutour

Oh ok, must be a though job to test all the plugins and all their versions. Out of curiosity, it was pretty hard to know when a new version of a plugin was released before. I guess It will be easier with the new appcast. So does this apply to "old" plugins or only the ones using appcast?

Kevin

We are not testing all plugin versions against a specific version of Sketch. If a plugin version is incompatible then Sketch will assume all earlier versions of that same plugin will be incompatible.

perrysmotors

I've just tried out the latest build of Sketch 45. Everything seems to be working fine! I'm using the Sketchpacks API to generate the appcast file. Sketch flags when an older version of my plugin is installed and is able to update the plugin to the latest version. So all good.

I will hold off releasing a version of my plugin which includes the appcast until I get the nod from ale or Kevin . Let me know when you're happy for me to release.

perrysmotors

Do you have a process for notifying plugin developers that their plugin is incompatible?

ale

perrysmotors I'm still working on the details, but it'll probably consist of one or more of the following:

opening issues / PRs on the plugins that have a public GitHub repo
email / Twitter / forum mention to plugin developers that don't have a public repo
making lots of noise on social media as the deadline approaches
praying to $deity

Of course, since we don't have an official register of all plugin developers (maybe we should?) it's probably impossible to reach out to every single person, but we'll definitely do our best to try.

All suggestions are welcome, so if there's anything missing from that list, we're all ears!

ale

perrysmotors TBH, I would release an update now, just to make sure people already have the appcast URL when we release 45 (in case you need to release an update that fixes any issue in 45)

Kevin

Thanks for the feedback perrysmotors. Glad to hear it is working.

I'll let ale be the judge of when you can release your plugin, though I can't think of any reason why you shouldn't be able to now as long as you have updated your manifest to use the appcast property.

3raxton

ale

To my understanding the manifest.json file needs to have an appcast entry which links to the appcast file, hosted <somewhere>, and Sketch will read this file from the plugin.

Is there anything I’m missing or is this completely incorrect?

ale

3raxton that's exactly how the system works

philsinatra

ale Any reason the appcast file can't be included in the plugin repo and therefore hosted by GitHub?

ale

philsinatra what mathieudutour said

mathieudutour

As long as you point it to the raw file (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OWNER/REPO/master/appcast.xml), it's fine.